A few years ago, I posted something here about the shady work of a private Israeli intelligence agency to discredit those in the Obama administration who had helped secure the nuclear deal with Iran. The organization’s name was Black Cube. And, in my post, I noted the fact that, decades before, I was the member of a two-person acoustic noise band in Ann Arbor that performed a song by that very same name. Here’s what I wrote at the time, lamenting the fact that absolutely no documentation of this particular band existed.
Sadly, no recordings exist, but I was once in a band with a fellow by the name of Jim Magas called Ski Troop Attack, and we had a song called Black Cube. Interestingly, in the band, we played time travelers from a post apocalyptic future who had come back with broken instruments to give the people of the world clues as to what the future holds. In addition to Black Cube, we had songs called Clean Surface and Glass Needle. Hopefully those names don’t also come up in the press. If they do, I might start thinking that I really have been sent from the future.
Well, some old footage of Ski Troop Attack in action was just posted to Youtube by Aaron Dilloway, a long-time member of the influential experimental music ensemble Wolf Eyes, and founder of Hanson Records. I’m not sure how the video came to be in Dilloway’s possession. If I’m not mistaken, it’s video taken, back in 1992, by my girlfriend at the time, Linette Lao — video that I’d thought had been long lost. [Linette and I would end up getting married in ’99, upon moving back to Michigan from Los Angeles.] I suspect, at some point before Linette and I moved away from Michigan in ’93, I must have given a copy of this recently surfaced video to Pete Larson, founder of Bub Records, for the label’s archive. [This would have been around the same time that he and I were working on the infamous Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink video compilation, Fears of Practice.] If I had to guess, I’d say that Pete likely taped over the Ski Troop Attack show in question when making a video for Dilloway, leaving only the short clip that you’re about to see, which Dilloway, by sheer happenstance, discovered a few days ago, and subsequently unleashed upon the world.
I have a notoriously bad memory, but here’s what I recall about my time as a member of Ski Troop Attack.
I should preface this by saying that Jim Magas and I, while certainly friendly, were never particularly close. I can remember, on at least one occasion, walking around town with Jim, and having what I’d consider to be a fairly meaningful conversation about life, and stuff, but that wasn’t the norm. He’d come to my shows, and I’d go to his, and I certainly enjoyed his company, but we never had the kind of relationship that, say, I had with Pete, or he had with Pete. [While I was in Skink with Pete, Jim was in Couch with Pete. So, I guess, to use Mormon terminology, we were kind of like “sister wives“, living kind of parallel lives, with Pete being the King Strang-like character between us.]
If I had to identify a reason why Jim and I never really became close friends, I’d say it was because he cared about the art of music making, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to write songs, or practice, or, for that matter, even learn how to play an instrument. I guess you could say that I didn’t want to try too hard at anything. I just wanted to have ideas, and then pretty much immediately act upon them. [This, by the way, is not something that I’m proud of. I think it comes from a deeply held, and all-consuming fear of rejection. Subconsciously, I believe, I think that, if I don’t try too hard, the criticism won’t effect me. Like, if I were to put my all into writing a book, and it got reviewed horribly, I think it would devastate me. But, if I were to dash off a zine, and it got bad reviews, I could somehow justify it to myself by saying, “It was only a zine, I didn’t try that hard.” This is something that I still struggle with.]
Jim, I don’t think there’s any doubt, was always much more serious about the music. He, it seemed to me, had a clear vision as to what he wanted to accomplish. He appreciated the context in which he was working, and cared about moving the genre forward. [Again, I may be wrong about this, but it’s how I perceived things at the time.] And I didn’t know shit, or care to know shit. I just wanted to explore, try different stuff, and find new ways to offend and confuse the people who found themselves trapped in the same room with me. I was much more interested in the performance art side of things than I was by the music itself. And, Jim, while he appreciated the performative stuff, cared a whole lot more about the music. [I can still remember an early gig at a house in Ann Arbor where it occurred to me that I could run my cord up through a heating vent, so I could be upstairs, playing bass by myself on a couch, while the rest of the band was in the basement, playing with one another. That was the kind of thing that I enjoyed, not writing songs, practicing, and getting better. I just wanted to mess around with the model of how stuff was done.] So, I wasn’t someone that Jim could really talk with about obscure European noise labels, and the like. While I made noise, it was out of necessity. It wasn’t what I listened to or cared about. [At the time, I was probably listening to Songs of Love and Hate, by Leonard Cohen, and Marquee Moon, by Television, more than anything else.]
I mention all of this just to illustrate how strange and unexpected it was that Jim reached out in ’92 to ask if I wanted to play a show with him. [My guess is that he couldn’t find anyone else to play with on this one particular occasion, but maybe there was something else going on at the time that I don’t remember.] He said, if I recall correctly, that he was putting an acoustic noise band together to play the birthday party of a University of Michigan math professor, and asked if I’d like to join. And apparently I said yes. [All of these details could be wrong, but this is how I remember things having gone down.]
I remember, just prior to the gig, being introduced to a young woman, and getting into a tiny car with my warped and broken acoustic guitar. We may have all be wearing gingham, as Jim had told me that the name of the band was to be the Gingham Girls. I can’t recall. And I remember driving up to this small, one-story house, getting out with our various instruments, walking through a fence into the backyard, and immediately climbing up into a tree, where we started playing, mostly hidden by the foliage, as a table full of confused people sat beneath us, having drinks and eating hors d’oeuvres. Jim may have talked with the host, but I don’t think I said anything to anyone. I just walked in with my broken, out-of-tune acoustic guitar, climbed the tree, and started playing. I may have been wearing a ski mask. I suspect Jim knew them, had come out in advance and proposed that we’d be playing in the tree, etc. But, for all I really know, we just drove around that afternoon until Jim saw a backyard party taking place, and we just crashed it, with him telling us that it was a birthday party for a U-M math professor, and that they were expecting us. I really have no idea. I just know that, after a “song” or two, the woman came with us climbed down, never to be seen again.
I had a good time in the tree, just plinking away, while Jim, I think, played his saxophone. I liked the fact that, as an acoustic noise band, we didn’t have “songs” to learn, or heavy equipment to lug around. And I liked that music was secondary to the performative aspect. [I was never good at learning songs, and would often have to have my bandmates remind me as to what strings I had to hit, and where to put my fingers, as we were on stage, playing in front of people. My memory just doesn’t work that way.] So, I think, after that Gingham Girls appearance, Jim and I decided to keep at it, and try something new. Jim contributed the name, Ski Troop Attack. [If I remember correctly, he was a fan of the 1960 Roger Corman film about American soldiers on skis trying to blow up a German bridge during World War II.] And, from there, we developed the back story of our characters. We were, as I recall, time travelers who had come back from a dystopian future with salvaged instruments, to warn the people of the earth of the horrible fate that awaited them. But, for some reason, we couldn’t just come right out and say what that horrible fate was. Maybe we were afraid that, by doing so, we’d make matters worse. Or, maybe, we’d mutated in such a way that we weren’t able to communicate vocally, or through writing. I can’t remember exactly. I just remember that we communicated by making guttural kinds of noises. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we ever spoke to the audience, or introduced our “songs” by name. We just kind of growled and yelped our way though our sets.
I can’t remember all of the song names, or what differentiated them from one another, but there was one that we called Water, during which we’d just gargle water. I don’t know if Jim shared my interpretation, but I remember thinking that, where we’d come from, there hadn’t been much water, and we’d wanted to savor it for as long as possible before swallowing. We just stood there for minutes on end, our heads tilted back, gargling the same mouthfuls of water, and smacking our instruments. There was another one — it could have been Black Cube — where Jim, putting a paper bag over his head, hyperventilated to the point of passing out, while I ran a buzzing metal vibrator over the strings of my guitar. Others, like Glass Needle and Clean White Surface, I don’t have clear memories of, but the names have stuck with me some 30 years now, so I imagine they must have been at least somewhat interesting.
There may have been other shows, but only two come to mind. One, which you can see in this video, was at a performance space on the second floor of a building in downtown Ann Arbor. I think it was on Liberty Street. The guy who ran the place was named Harvey, and he was somewhat famous around town for photographing nude people in public. [Again, I may have my facts wrong, but this is how I remember it.] The place, as I recall, didn’t serve anything in the way of food or drink. It was just an empty room that you’d pay to sit in. And, if I remember correctly, you’d pay by the minute. It was a ridiculous idea, but I appreciated the insane ballsiness of it. You’d have to sign in and sign out. And there would be entertainment. I don’t know how long it lasted, or how we came to be there, but I know we played there at least once. My guess is that Jim must have set it up.
I don’t recall much about the show, but I know that Jim and I, at some point, started crawling across the tables. And, in doing so, we knocked into a large candle that had all of this hardened, melted wax surrounding it. Well, the wax broke, and, after we were done, Harvey came over and yelled us, telling us how hard he’d been working for weeks to melt the wax just right. I don’t remember if he requested restitution, but I remember it be awkward, uncomfortable and surreal… standing there in a ski mask, being yelled at someone for breaking wax.
The only other gig I remember was late one night in Nickel’s Arcade. I remember that we’d printed up little handbills, and we’d handed them out to people downtown, urging them to come and see us perform. The only person I can clearly remember being there was Andy Claydon, from the Monarchs, who was super enthusiastic about the whole thing. I remember him out on State Street, dragging unsuspecting people in to see us. I also remember the show coming to an abrupt end when a police officer walked over and pulled the paper bag off of Jim’s head as he lay on the ground, writhing around. To my credit, I didn’t stop playing my broken acoustic guitar, or warn Jim about what was going to happen. I just kept playing, waiting to see how things would play out. And it was kind of magical.
So that’s the story of Ski Troop Attack. Or at lest that’s my version of it. I don’t know that it would have translated well to vinyl, but I wish we’d recorded something, if only to be a part of the official Bulb pantheon, along with all the other great, historic acts, like Couch, Math and Skink.
OK, so here’s the video. Sadly, it doesn’t capture what I remember to be our best work. But I’m thankful to have some proof that we did in fact exist… Oh, and for what it’s worth, Pete Larson has gone on the record saying that, in his opinion, “(Ski Troop Attack) was the greatest musical act to ever come out of the area.”
